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Innovation, innovation, innovation

News
- 19/09/2017

The Cystic Fibrosis Trust has awarded Clinical Excellence and Innovation Awards to five talented cystic fibrosis (CF) specialists for the second year running.

The Clinical Excellence and Innovation Awards provide funding support to projects at CF centres across the UK that are working to improve the lives of people affected by CF, and the care they receive. Centres can receive between £15,000 and £75,000 to support their projects, and all applicants are required to obtain equal funding from another source. This means that the awards given by the Trust are matched pound for pound, bringing in extra funding to vital CF research.

This year’s awards will be supporting a number of projects:

A podcast project led by Dr Anne Devenny

A home cough frequency monitoring study led by Professor Daniel Peckham

An evaluation of the novel Freestyle Libre Glucose Monitoring system led by Professor Andrew Jones

An investigation into remote monitoring and gaming technology in children led by Dr Colin Wallis

Analysis of an app for screening for hearing loss caused by certain CF treatments, led by Professor Stuart Elborn

Cough frequency and respiratory exacerbations

One awardee, Professor Daniel Peckham, has received over £70,000 to support his study at the Leeds Adult Cystic Fibrosis Centre into home cough frequency monitoring for early detection of pulmonary exacerbations.

Professor Peckham said: “We are hoping to determine if a home cough frequency monitor can detect the onset of a chest exacerbation (infection) earlier than personal reporting, improving the chance of providing prompt treatment.”

Remote monitoring to improve adherence

Professor Eleanor Main, who is working on a project that is being funded at Great Ormond Street Hospital investigating how gaming technology can improve adherence to physiotherapy in children with CF, said: “I think our project is ambitious, exciting and unique in a number of respects. Technological advances have opened the door to powerful new ways of answering important physiotherapy questions, allowing us to venture away from traditional research methods, which have not delivered satisfactory answers despite several decades of research.

“This project also offers a genuinely low participant burden: young people with CF will participate simply by getting on with their lives, while airway clearance and exercise data are automatically collected and stored in a secure cloud space.

“Importantly, this project is trying to improve children’s engagement with tiresome routine treatments by making them fun, while measuring how this can improve clinical outcomes. If gaming turns out to be genuinely helpful, we can work hard to make this accessible for more young people.”

Dr Keith Brownlee, Director of Impact at the Trust, said “Our Clinical Excellence and Innovation Awards are a fantastic way to attract bright new ideas that can bring important benefits to the lives of people with cystic fibrosis further down the line.”

Find out more about our awards, or donate today to help us continue to fund ground-breaking research for years to come.